This blog used to be about politics. Not so much anymore as I have worked through
my fascination with that subject. It now seems appropriate that with a new president
and the end of the Bush nightmare that I move on to new subjects that are more in
line with my current interests. I may still occasionally express an opinion about
political matters but for the most part I will be commenting on music, photography
and personal observations. Thank you for reading.

"The greatest threat before humanity today is the possibility of secret and sudden attack with chemical or biological or radiological or nuclear weapons."

I agree with this assessment, so much so in fact that I agreed with it close to five years ago (or more). Its become increasingly obvious that conventional warfare has become obsolete in dealing with the worst new threats. The recent invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan illustrate this point. They were some the last of the easy targets. Our greater, more immediate threat, of nuclear proliferation by states that already possess nuclear weapons cannot be dealt with by invasion. Doing so will only create an environment that unleashes those weapons into the chaos. Where they end up we cannot predict. This is not a feasible option, and why we can only make vague growling noises at Pakistan for doing exactly what our government claimed Iraq was doing, possessing and proliferating dangerous weaponry.

Once a nation attains nuclear status the nature of our relationship with them changes. So while invading Iraq sent a message that nations on that path will be subject to overthrow, our dealings with nuclear armed nations like North Korea and Pakistan send a clear message that once you've sneaked into the nuclear club the rewards will be worth the risk.

Bush loses me when he once again trots out missile defense as the panacea to nuclear threats from terrorists. I can only rub my eyes, check the clock melting over the tree limb and wonder what kind of alternate universe Mr. Bush inhabits. Its obviously not one where terrorists used PLANES to launch a devastating terrorist threat against New York and Washington D.C. Because if we lived in the same universe we might both assume that missile defense system would not have prevented that scenario and it will not protect us from similar threats.

Bush once again plays politics by shifting the blame for the Iraqi debacle on "poor intelligence". That we didn't have good intelligence in that region is evident. But what Mr. Bush did was to cherrypick that intel and present it as rock solid and incontrovertible. For him to now come out now and say we need to make sure the president has good information is just laughable. We need a president that can admit when he doesn't have all the facts and doesn't use the intel that's there to push an ideological goal. That's what we need Mr. Bush.

Many of the proposals set forth in the rest of his speech are common sense measures that should have been in place already. This isn't a new threat, many people saw it coming years ago and political wrangling kept us from adequately addressing it. The blood of the victims is on the hands of this administration, the last administration and all the political operatives from both parties that believe the entire world revolves around beating the other side. And I'm not talking about the terrorists.